Adobo Seasoning: What’s in It, Where the Name Comes From, and How to Use It

Say “adobo” in different kitchens and you could end up with a wet marinade, a can of chipotles in sauce or a Filipino pork braise. This page is about the one in the shaker: a dry, salt-based blend of garlic, oregano and black pepper, often with turmeric for color, best known in the United States as a Puerto Rican pantry staple. It’s mostly salt, so season with it the way you’d season with salt. Goya’s version lists salt first, at 520 mg of sodium per quarter teaspoon.¹

At a glance

What is in it

Salt comes first on the Goya label, and its 1/4 teaspoon serving weighs 1.5 g.¹ In Mario Juan’s kitchen, TASTE reports, the spices are ground, toasted and mixed into the salt, and each batch gets used within a couple of weeks. Some homemade versions add onion powder and cumin, neither of which is on the Goya label.¹⁵

MSG. FDA considers MSG generally recognized as safe. When it’s added, it has to appear on the ingredient list as “monosodium glutamate”; it can’t hide under “spices and flavoring.”⁴ So the label tells you whether a given jar has it. Goya’s Adobo with Pepper, as listed on Goya’s own trade page, doesn’t.¹

Where the name comes from

Adobo comes from the Spanish verb adobar, to marinate. The Real Academia Española’s dictionary defines adobo as the act of marinating, as a broth or sauce used to season food, and specifically as a broth of vinegar, salt, oregano, garlic and pimentón used to season and preserve meat.⁶ Britannica’s description is similar: a marinade usually made with vinegar and seasonings such as salt, garlic, black pepper, oregano and paprika.⁷

The dry blend in a shaker skips the vinegar. Goya’s label lists none. PepperScale separates a wet rub, adobo mojado, from the dry adobo seco, and says most people who say adobo seasoning mean the Puerto Rican-style dry version.⁸ TASTE dates Goya’s version to 1966, from a company it says Spanish immigrants started in the United States in 1936, and calls the blends synonymous with Puerto Rican flavors.⁵

Other adobos. Britannica pictures chipotle chiles preserved in a tomato-based adobo sauce (the canned “chipotles in adobo” you know from Mexican cooking) and the Filipino dish of pork adobo, made with pork belly, bay leaves, soy sauce, vinegar and spices. Neither is the dry seasoning. Filipino chefs and food historians have argued that the Philippine dish is indigenous and pre-Hispanic, and have debated its Spanish name, ABS-CBN’s ANCX reported in 2019.⁹ We couldn’t open any source with early written records of the dish.

Flavor and the compounds behind it

Adobo seasoning tastes salty and garlicky first, with oregano’s herby edge and a mild bite from black pepper. PepperScale also calls original Goya adobo mild, with black pepper as its only source of heat. The chemistry belongs to the individual ingredients:

How adobo seasoning is used

Goya suggests a shake before cooking on meat, chicken, fish and vegetables. TASTE’s writer shakes it onto pork chops before grilling, stirs it into mashed potatoes and adds it to vegetables as they sauté. PepperScale calls it the usual dry rub for most versions of pernil asado, the Puerto Rican roast pork shoulder, and reminds you that commercial blends often contain salt.⁸ Cooks also use it in rice and beans, on eggs, in burger and meatball mixes, and in place of salt in marinades with citrus juice or vinegar. See good Mexican spices for chicken.

Since the blend is mostly salt, treat it as the salt in a recipe. Season with adobo first, then taste before you add more salt.

Buying and quality

Check the label for three things: where salt falls in the list, whether MSG is listed, and which spices beyond garlic and oregano are in there (cumin, turmeric, onion, chile). Reduced-sodium and organic versions exist. Make your own and you set the salt level.

Storage

Mario Juan keeps his house blend at room temperature and uses it within a couple of weeks, TASTE reports.⁵ For commercial blends, we didn’t find a shelf life from any regulator or standards body. Keep the jar closed and away from heat, light and stovetop steam.

Safety

• Sodium. At 520 mg per quarter teaspoon, a full teaspoon of Goya’s blend carries about 2,080 mg of sodium (4 × 520 mg). That’s close to FDA’s Daily Value of less than 2,300 mg a day.¹¹¹
• MSG. FDA says it has received reports of symptoms such as headache and nausea after foods containing MSG but could never confirm that MSG caused them. In placebo-controlled studies of people who reported sensitivity, reactions couldn’t be triggered consistently.⁴ The reports that do exist involve 3 grams or more taken without food; a typical serving of food with added MSG contains less than 0.5 grams.⁴ See monosodium glutamate.
• Lead in spices. A New York City health department review of 1,496 spice samples from 41 countries, collected from 2008 to 2017, found detectable lead in more than half and above 2 parts per million in more than 30%, with higher average levels in spices bought abroad.¹² The abstract doesn’t break results out by blend.

Health claims

You’ll see claims that adobo seasoning aids digestion, helps manage blood sugar or slows cancer. We couldn’t trace any of them to a study of the blend, and we’re not making any health claim for it.

Substitutes and comparisons

• Adobo seasoning substitutes
• Sazón seasoning (and sazón substitutes), adobo’s frequent partner on the same shelf
• All-purpose seasoning and seasoned salt
• MSG vs. salt and cooking with MSG

The individual ingredients: garlic powder, oregano, Mexican oregano, black pepper, turmeric, cumin, onion powder and table salt. For the chile used in adobo sauce, see chipotle powder.